Stupid shit in Medellin

[JohnnyWalker55]

Another excellent example of not knowing what you're talking about.

Paulie and I had a big public, knock down fight right here over 3 years ago. It might have been the reason this thread was started. We haven't really talked since then. We're not sidekicks, friends or buddies.

Here's something you might understand when you reach emotional maturity. I agree or disagree with what is posted. It doesn't matter who posted it. Bullshit (for example, declaring the pandemic is over) is bullshit, regardless of the source. Good advice is good advice regardless of the source.

As for the rest of what you agreed with, I suggest you go read the other threads. There have been a few people over the years who might have agreed with me at one time or another.

Oops, sorry, I have a life and don't spend every waking minute on this board typing out non-sensical solipsistic essays and giving input on anything and everything related to Colombia.

I keep it short and sweet and 95% of my posts are otg reports with the other 5% are laughing my ass off replying to you paulie and villainy in this silly thread. Peace.

[JjBee62]

With hundreds of thousands of cases of Omicron daily, should we still have to take a covid test to re-enter the country? Hmmmmm.

Vaccines were supposed to be 95% effective. More people die in 2021 than 2020 when there were no vaccines available. Why are Vaccines mandates and Boosters are still being discussed? Why is no one talking about the false effectiveness of the vaccines? Hmmmmmmmmm.

How does China, a nation of 1.3 billion people, not have more cases of Omicron? Hmmmmm.

The answers to these questions seem like common sense to me, but half the country will cry murder if I were to state my opinion publicly. Hmmmmmm. Freedom of speech? Hmmmmm. LOL let the name calling and slandering begin! Jaja.

Why do you still have to take a Covid test to enter? Because that's the rule that's currently in place. Does it do anything? Who knows? Does the law against removing mattress tags serve any purpose?

Vaccines weren't supposed to be 95% effective. Initial data showed up to 95% effectiveness. Later data lowered that number. Further studies are showing that effectiveness decreases over time, hence the reason for boosters.

More people died in 2021 than in 2020? True. Can you think of any reason why? I can think of a few. First, there were very few known cases in the US, or anywhere outside of a small area in China, until March of 2020. However, at the beginning of 2021 there were 200,000 new cases per day in the US. There's 2 reasons, a shorter effective year and a much lower starting point for 2020.

There are other factors, but the easiest way to look at it is to look at the number of those deaths which were unvaccinated for each year. For 2020 100% of the deaths (or nearly) were unvaccinated. In 2021 roughly 84% of the deaths were unvaccinated. The vaccine doesn't keep anyone from dying, if they don't get vaccinated.

I think you're overestimating your own importance. You can say anything you want about Covid, vaccines or anything else and at least 99.9% won't even know you said anything at all. Certainly half the country isn't going to cry murder.

Don't you understand freedom of speech? Your right to say whatever you want, with some fairly specific limitations, is protected. However, if you say something stupid anyone who notices has the protected right to point it out to you.

[JjBee62]

CL, what is frustrating to me is that it is the number of droplets that cause disease, and the government has just emphasized the mask when that is a small part of the whole picture. Yeah, N95 probably works better than cloth. I think both are helpful though. Thing is that it is just not masks but length of time with someone and talking to them and also the force of the particles expired so more with singing, laughing, coughing, or the force of someone's voice. The goal is to limit the exposure of those particles.

And handwashing was a complete joke. Social distancing was pretty arbitrary as well.

You started off very well. Your first paragraph sums up the problem pretty well. Your second paragraph went downhill somewhat.

The hand washing did turn out to not be a significant factor. However, the proper response is to be more cautious, rather than less cautious. If you have people washing their hands more than necessary, worst case, you have some dry skin. Very few people are going to complain that your hands are too clean.

Social distancing is another story. "The goal is to limit exposure to those particles. " One way to limit exposure is social distancing. It's like using the N95 instead of a regular mask, an added layer of protection.

The NFL did some great Covid studies. It was thought that you had to be present with someone for 10 minutes indoors to catch Covid from them. The NFL found that if people were talking to each other and not wearing masks, there could be transmission of the virus in as little as 5 minutes.

But like I said, you can throw that all out the window now. You have teams that are 98% vaxxed and half the team has Covid. I do not know what the time frame is with catching Covid now. It seems like it may be down to a minute or two and now the people do not look sick. Outside of doing what Paulie does and living in a bunker, I do not know how someone does not catch omicron.

The NFL isn't really a level playing field. Average age is probably under 30, high level of fitness, overall a better immune system than average. However, the issues they faced, with more precautions than most take, illustrates how quickly the virus can spread.

I also don't know how anyone can avoid catching omicron. To me that's good news. By now anyone in the US, who has anything to worry about with Covid, has had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. This all comes (eventually) to an end when everyone has sufficient immunity to reduce the spread. There are 2 ways to get sufficient immunity. Omicron makes the second way much easier for everyone who hasn't chosen the first way.

[JjBee62]

We are all dead. Have fun while you can.

"Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 75% of vaccinated people who died of COVID-19 had at least four comorbidities, sparking an outpouring of commentary from people surprised by her statement and others saying, "I told you so. ".

The top health official made the comment on ABC's Good Morning America on Friday, days after Dr. Anthony Fauci said on TV that statistics on child hospitalizations are being overblown..

I'm pretty sure I posted that already. Having 4 or more comorbidities puts you at a high risk for anything which stresses your system. No vaccine can change that. The fact that 75% of vaccinated deaths were in that category isn't extremely useful.

What's more useful is the percentage of deaths which were fully vaccinated, or the unvaccinated percentage.

This link has interactive graphs and country by country breakdowns, making it easy to visualize the data.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination

For the US fully vaccinated death rate (all vaccines) for all age groups was 0. 54 per 100,000 (Oct 30,2021). That number jumps to 5. 53 when you consider just people 80 and older. Unvaccinated for all ages was 3.47, 28.70 for 80 and up.

Looking at my age range, 50-64 the fully vaccinated death rate is 0.20 per 100 k, compared to 5.25 for unvaccinated.

Drop down to the 30-49 age range you get vaccinated 0.03, unvaccinated 1.20.

Only the 12-17 age group shows no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

To put it another way, vaccination prevents death in:

1.O% of cases for people 12-17.

2.94% of cases for people 18-29.

3.96% of cases for people 30-49.

4.96% of cases for people 50-64.

5.95% of cases for people 65-79.

6.81% of cases for people 80 or older.

If you're under 18, getting vaccinated has minimal personal benefit. You might be less likely to get infected and infect others, but there's no real impact on your survival. If you're over 80 and have at least a couple of other risk factors, your personal benefit might not be significant. At 95, obese, with high blood pressure and diabetes, your life expectancy probably isn't changing much with vaccination.

If you're under 80, or over 80 and in good health, well the data is readily available.

[Mr Enternational]

We are all dead. Have fun while you can.

"Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 75% of vaccinated people who died of COVID-19 had at least four comorbidities, sparking an outpouring of commentary from people surprised by her statement and others saying, "I told you so. ".

The top health official made the comment on ABC's Good Morning America on Friday, days after Dr. Anthony Fauci said on TV that statistics on child hospitalizations are being overblown. ".

[JjBee62]

First, allow me to say kudos on a well thought out response. I would agree with most of your points and disagree with a few.

I could not disagree more. As I said earlier in the thread, this was arguably the most important human trials of our lifetime. You contradict yourself when you say everything went as planned. And then detail how they moved the mark. It's like a 100-question exam. If you answer the first 10 questions correctly, you can stop there and claim a perfect score? I concede there is an ethical argument that can be made. (I don't necessarily agree with it on balance.) But to pull the plug 2 months in because you like the early results? That's borderline unethical. We lost any ability to track longevity. And lo and behold, one of the biggest problems we have today is the vaccine waning. Let's not mention long term side effects. But this is where it gets ugly and sinister. We allowed Pfizer to grade their own test. Granted, that's normal. But the FDA and CDC were waiting with their rubber stamp. The reality: they got a 100% on those first 10 questions but boy, they sure didn't earn a perfect score.

Weren't you earlier complaining about using analogies? Your 100 question exam is a false equivalence. You really should learn about logical fallacies. A better analogy would be an exam with a time limit, such as IQ and Aptitude tests. Once you've answered all the questions, the time remaining is no longer important. You can hand in your paper and find out your score.

It wasn't the most important human trial in our lifetime. Whoever put that idea in your head is a fool. Take for example a study to determine if cigarette smoking has associated health risks? Would you put all your faith in the study if it was completely funded by a tobacco company, using tobacco company employees? A Pfizer study on a Pfizer vaccine? If they had continued the study for 30 years, one of your complaints would still be that the study was conducted by Pfizer, so it must be tainted.

Long term efficacy wasn't part of the study. It was released very early that how long the vaccine would be effective was unknown. Studies are continuing to determine how much efficacy wanes over time. This is nothing new. Polio vaccine efficacy wanes over time. The minimum schedule requires 3 doses, some countries use more. Tetanus, TB, Pneumonia, etc, all lose effectiveness over time. We didn't lose the ability to track longevity. Those studies are continuing around the world, every day, by researchers unaffiliated with Pfizer.

As I've stated before, and which can be easily verified, long term side effects aren't an issue with vaccines. You keep repeating that nonsense and it's downright silly. It's like drinking a glass of water. If there's something bad in the water it will make you sick, within a matter of hours, days at the most. Unless you continue drinking water from the same source, long term side effects aren't an issue. Even if long term side effects were an issue, many things take decades to show up, such as liver damage or kidney failure. Do you wait 20 years to release a vaccine? It would be completely worthless.

I'm ashamed to admit to being a numbers nerd. LOL. Again, I don't disagree with much of what was said. Both RRR and ARR are valid metrics. And you were very effective in summarizing their worth. But what I strongly object to is selling RRR as efficacy. Or even the false definition spread about efficacy. Use your example. If that old lady got a flier saying you are 95% more likely to stay free of covid if you take this shot, would she? Because that's what happened to the masses. And that is not at all accurate. So I suppose my beef is more with the marketing vs the actual math. Here again, I blame CDC and FDA as much as I blame Pfizer. And I blame our policy makers even more. They put the politics over science anf clarity.

I'll agree to disagree with you on these points. But I appreciate the dialogue.

Assuming you're a numbers nerd, why didn't you pick up that the CCCA video was using numbers from 7 days into the study, instead of the numbers at the end of the study?

The only people saying the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective are the people who are beating their anti-vax drums saying that Pfizer lied. However, Pfizer didn't lie. Their preliminary finding was up to, or as much as 95% protection. Their completed study lowered that to up to 91% protection. You call it a marketing ploy, I call it common sense.

First, as I've already pointed out too many times, you will never know the absolute risk. Never. Not now, not in 2 years, not in 100 years. The only way to know is to take a large population of people, expose them all to the virus, then count how many test positive. Then you withhold medical treatment and see how many get seriously ill and eventually count how many die. It's the same basic method the US used to determine the effects of radiation exposure. It's not exactly ethical, but it does give you accurate results.

If you don't know the absolute risk, you have to work with what you have. Placebo group had 850 infections, vaccine group 77. Assuming both groups had equal random exposure to infection, it's simple math, 77÷850=0. 09, or 9%, a 91% reduction. Surely a numbers nerd spotted that. If they knew everyone in both groups had been exposed, with identical exposure, then ARR comes into play, but nobody knows that. So it's as much as 91%.

Is it safe to assume the other 42 k people in the study had natural immunity to Covid? Not unless you exposed them all to the virus, which I've already covered. Do you publish that, since under 1,000 of 43,000 people got infected during the study, the chance of getting infected is only 2. 3%? Not if you are being ethical. Which leaves the ethical and common sense result, up to 91%.

As I said, what you call marketing, I call common sense. Let's say Pfizer went with your understanding of the issue and they let you use the cherry picked data from the 7 day point. That leaves Pfizer telling people their risk of Covid is only 0. 88%. Assuming the other vaccine manufacturers followed along, we have everyone informed that almost nobody is getting Covid. Using your ARR which you keep insisting on, it's impossible for more than 300,000 people in the US to get Covid (for the numbers nerd, 330,000,000×0. 88=290,400).

That might just cause some confusion. How could we have 61 million cases and over 800 k deaths when that critical ARR clearly states that only 290 k could ever possibly test positive? Numbers nerd time again, that brings US deaths down to 5808. Sure, still using your ARR, the vaccine will cut the total number of cases from 290 k to 13 k, but is it worth it, when there are less than 6 k deaths?

Along comes common sense to save the day. The Absolute Risk isn't 0. 88%. Everyone knows that. ARR isn't critical. Almost everyone knows that. Does the vaccine reduce your risk of becoming infected? Yes. Are you going to need a booster dose? Probably. Will you need a 4th dose? Possibly. Does the vaccine reduce your risk of dying from Covid, if you get infected? Yes. Does it reduce your risk of hospitalization if you become infected? Again the answer is yes. Should you personally get vaccinated? Go talk to your doctor.

Which leaves Pfizer with the choice of lying about Covid and saying almost nobody is getting sick or dying (your preference) or telling people that their vaccine is an effective alternative to getting sick and dying (my preference).

"Agree to disagree" is one of the stupidest cliches out there. It works fine when discussing restaurants, or girls. It works fine when comparing mongering destinations. It becomes completely useless when discussing anything objective.

One more example, I'll make it relevant. You're getting ready to start a short trip to Medellin? You've voiced concerns over getting stuck there with a positive Covid test? I pointed out, arriving tomorrow, getting tested on Saturday and returning to the US on Sunday carries a low risk of testing positive. However, I left one important thing out.

So let's agree to disagree on how important that 0. 88% Absolute Risk number from the CCCA video is. I say it's not only useless, it's ridiculously low, especially with the current spread of omicron. You say that only 0. 88% of the population is susceptible to Covid. Since you're vaccinated, your AR is a dismal 0. 04%.

So there's absolutely no need to worry about what I forgot to mention. Enjoy your trip!

[Ptrbrgr]

First, allow me to say kudos on a well thought out response. I would agree with most of your points and disagree with a few.

I also appreciate the dialogue and that you share your reasoning in a way one can have a discussion. With apologies, my response will be a bit shorter as things are very busy at the moment.

This is really not meant to be condescending, but I am predicting you never ran a clinical trial yourself or served on a data and safety monitoring board (DSMB). So here is the gist: Every clinical trial (this one, run by Pfizer) has oversight by an independent group of experts. That's the DSMB. The trial protocol is established and agreed upon before the trial starts, and includes a detailed plan for interim analyses and early stopping rules. And if the trialists deviate one iota from the protocol, the DSMB hands them their asses. It rarely happens, but when it does, it is epic.

I could not disagree more. As I said earlier in the thread, this was arguably the most important human trials of our lifetime. You contradict yourself when you say everything went as planned. And then detail how they moved the mark. It's like a 100-question exam. If you answer the first 10 questions correctly, you can stop there and claim a perfect score? I concede there is an ethical argument that can be made. (I don't necessarily agree with it on balance.) But to pull the plug 2 months in because you like the early results? That's borderline unethical.

It is important to understand that nobody moved any mark, whatsoever. The early stopping rules were detailed in the protocol before the trial started. As the data comes in, at prespecified intervals the evidence is assessed. These are the interim analyses. To stop a trial early for positive reasons, the evidence for efficacy has to be overwhelming. The fact that you look at the data multiple times throughout a trial on a rolling basis is taken into account by what's called type I error attribution (type I error means you falsely conclude the treatment is effective when it is not). So nobody gets to cherry pick because they like the early results. When you start a trial, you have no idea what the outcome will be. There are many avenues a trial can take, and the decision rules where to go are established in the protocol. In this trial, an interim analysis hit all primary efficacy endpoints and safety checks, as specified in the protocol. In general, this can happen after 1 month, this can happen after 1 year, it might never happen and the trial runs for the maximum time specified in the protocol. In this trial, it happened after 2 months. Nobody moved any mark. Everything went as planned, according to protocol. The "not according to plan" in the video is a blatant lie.

We lost any ability to track longevity.

It depends on what you mean by "track longevity". As far as estimation of efficacy is concerned: yes, that ended when the trial was unblinded. But as I said above, when they stopped the trial the evidence was beyond any reasonable doubt that the vaccine was effective. The safety monitoring of course is still is ongoing.

And lo and behold, one of the biggest problems we have today is the vaccine waning.

I would argue the biggest issue right now is that omicron is a completely new serotype, which means it is a variant with a different set of antigens. So the standard vaccines do little if anything to prevent transmission. Yes, the antibodies are waning over time, but that has nothing to do with this trial per se. The vaccines still keep you out of the hospital (and preliminary data seem to indicate especially so if you have received a booster shot; and no, I am not a pharma guy).

Let's not mention long term side effects.

There is a common misconception what "long term side effects" means. Yes, there can be long term side effects. But is not going to be that in 10 years all of a sudden pandemonium starts among a large proportion of the vaccinated. The long term side effects we are concerned about are the really severe ones that are rare. Long term means you have to be monitoring for a long time so you observe enough of these rare events to be able to link them to the vaccine.

But this is where it gets ugly and sinister. We allowed Pfizer to grade their own test. Granted, that's normal. But the FDA and CDC were waiting with their rubber stamp. The reality: they got a 100% on those first 10 questions but boy, they sure didn't earn a perfect score.

See above, this is not true. There is no way any trial is going to stop early unless the DSMB is 100% behind it. And the NEJM report went through an additional set of independent hands. I agree that the CDC and FDA were probably very happy to put their stamp of approval onto this, but given the clean outcome of the trial, that was not a difficult decision to make.

I'm ashamed to admit to being a numbers nerd. LOL. Again, I don't disagree with much of what was said. Both RRR and ARR are valid metrics. And you were very effective in summarizing their worth. But what I strongly object to is selling RRR as efficacy. Or even the false definition spread about efficacy. Use your example. If that old lady got a flier saying you are 95% more likely to stay free of covid if you take this shot, would she? Because that's what happened to the masses. And that is not at all accurate. So I suppose my beef is more with the marketing vs the actual math. Here again, I blame CDC and FDA as much as I blame Pfizer. And I blame our policy makers even more. They put the politics over science anf clarity.

Good for you! I think we are walking in lock step about our assessment of the piss poor communication that took place throughout the pandemic, and the CDC to the day proudly carries that torch. Now to your point: I fully agree that most people including the elderly lady when asked would interpret efficacy incorrectly. My point was that despite what the CCCA wants you to believe, the ARR is even harder to correctly interpret in this particular context. The ARR changes when you run the trial longer or shorter (see previous post). The ARR changes when you run the trial for the same time but at a different point in time (because the prevalence of the virus will have changed). The ARR changes if you run the trial in a different population (healthier populations have a better chance of fighting of infections). So to correctly interpret the ARR in the context of a clinical trial, you would have to list all conditions that could affect the endpoint, and I would argue the vast majority of such conditions aren't even known to us (think genetics). The ARR is not a fixed number, unless you can specify all these conditions. And even then, it is not generalizable going forward. The RRR is the same in all of those settings, because the conditions (known or unknown) are the same in the treatment and placebo arm through randomization, and that stuff (disclaimer: typically) cancels when you calculate relative measurements. So yes, we should do a much better job of explaining what all of this means, but if you can't convey to grandma what the RRR means, zero chance you can convey what the ARR really means in this context. Again, medical decision making is a totally different story.

But I would also argue that often you don't have to be an expert to keep up, a little bit of critical thinking can go a long way. For example, let's assume you are watching the CCCA video, and they fully convince you that the FDA said you should always report the ARR and not the RRR, because the ARR is less misleading and more objective. Fine. But two minutes later, literally two minutes later after kicking up all this dust, the CCCA decries a 300% increase in adverse events comparing the vaccine to the placebo group. That number, my man, is a relative rate change. And at that point a little light bulb should go on - "wait a minute, didn't they just say you should always. . . ? " And if the CCCA hasn't lulled you, I think you would come to the conclusion that these CCCA people are either a bunch of hacks, or that they are trying to do a number on you. Or both.

[Nounce]

For anyone traveling internationally, the pandemic isn't over, no matter what they think. If you're required to have a negative test to enter a country, telling the airline that your positive test doesn't matter because the pandemic is over for you, won't get you on the plane. Taking off your mask on the plane will still have you in legal trouble, if you refuse to put it back on...

That is why I say for me freedom is a collective right. Just follow rules and move on. What I am trying to say in my post is that the debate here or issue like this in general is not a science one, not the type of science being discussed here. You won't get very far at this point if you only focus on numbers or medical science alone.

Also the way you frame your reply here because you impose an idea on someone who may think differently but follow the rules. I think that is why it ends with shutting match.

Didn't you notice that Elvis was not really saying vaccine does not work, although that may seem what he was saying, but based on the reply, I think he was saying virus is evolving faster than vaccine development. I am not him, so only he knows what he thinks but that is what I came away with. The other poster reacted negatively about my post is similar.

[JjBee62]

And how many slaves did you see refusing to pick cotton? Different day and time. Back then it was send your soul to heaven because your ass belongs to Uncle Sam. Today people are more fuck this bullshit; I am going home.

If people had been of the mind of refusing then that is exactly what they would have done. And I am not saying they would have refused because of the vaccine. They would have refused because of the needles alone.

I tell people that 2 times I have literally seen grown men cry are when it was time to get a shot and when it was time to jump into some water. There were a lot of damn people that can't swim and are deathly afraid of water that went to join the Navy. Maybe they did not know they would have to get into the water at one point or another? Enjoy your basements gentlemen. Excuse me as I head out to enjoy this fine Cancun day.

I didn't realize you were old enough to actually see slaves picking cotton? Amazing. Your 200th birthday should be coming up soon.

I'm having trouble figuring this out. Are you saying that people in the military are slaves? Or that slaves were all volunteers? Seems a rather strange comparison to make.

But they didn't refuse because of the needles alone. 2 guys fainted every single time. 1 guy pissed his pants every single time. Can't get much more terrified than that.

The difference wasn't that everyone then thought their ass belonged to Uncle Sam. The difference was they didn't have a bunch of unqualified conspiracy theorists making up horror stories about the vaccines. Unfortunately, people are more willing to believe a lie than the truth. And more people are willing to spread lies rather than learn the truth. I guess it makes them feel important.

For example, earlier you lied (many times, but just one example) when you said you can't read more than 2 lines of anything I write. I'm still waiting for your explanation of how someone can have 2 separate Covid infections in under 1 month. Still working on it?

Hate to disappoint you. I don't have a basement, not that I'm ever home. Only home 28 hours last week. Hoping to get in 40 hours this week.

[Mr Enternational]

I don't recall anyone refusing the forced vaccinations I went through. Pretty sure they would have quickly been removed. Either that or, someone would have helped hold them down and they would have been vaccinated anyway.

And how many slaves did you see refusing to pick cotton? Different day and time. Back then it was send your soul to heaven because your ass belongs to Uncle Sam. Today people are more fuck this bullshit; I am going home.

If people had been of the mind of refusing then that is exactly what they would have done. And I am not saying they would have refused because of the vaccine. They would have refused because of the needles alone.

I tell people that 2 times I have literally seen grown men cry are when it was time to get a shot and when it was time to jump into some water. There were a lot of damn people that can't swim and are deathly afraid of water that went to join the Navy. Maybe they did not know they would have to get into the water at one point or another? Enjoy your basements gentlemen. Excuse me as I head out to enjoy this fine Cancun day.

[ChuchoLoco]

CL, what is frustrating to me is that it is the number of droplets that cause disease, and the government has just emphasized the mask when that is a small part of the whole picture. Yeah, N95 probably works better than cloth. I think both are helpful though. Thing is that it is just not masks but length of time with someone and talking to them and also the force of the particles expired so more with singing, laughing, coughing, or the force of someone's voice. The goal is to limit the exposure of those particles.

And handwashing was a complete joke. Social distancing was pretty arbitrary as well.

The NFL did some great Covid studies. It was thought that you had to be present with someone for 10 minutes indoors to catch Covid from them. The NFL found that if people were talking to each other and not wearing masks, there could be transmission of the virus in as little as 5 minutes.

But like I said, you can throw that all out the window now. You have teams that are 98% vaxxed and half the team has Covid. I do not know what the time frame is with catching Covid now. It seems like it may be down to a minute or two and now the people do not look sick. Outside of doing what Paulie does and living in a bunker, I do not know how someone does not catch omicron.

E, Just saw this. CDC is now saying that the virus is only active and alive and therefore contagious in the air for only 5 minutes! Maybe they are just learning along the way. Only thing, my son had to go to emergency room here in US for non virus reason anf he told me the ER was overflowing and people wired up and O2 in hallways and waiting area. He left but his doctor got him a room. Spoke with a friend's wife who works there and they have 3 times the virus patients compared to highest level a while ago. Not sure wtf is going on. I don't think angone really knows. All I know is we live in a crazy time. Keep staying healthy and enjoying yourself and same to all.

[JjBee62]

Are you stupid or are you just dumb? Forced quarantine of actual TB PATIENTS you compare to forced discaharge of people with nothing wrong with them, people with no disease to spread. But I guess we are going by they MIGHT get a disease to spread around. So if calculations are correct, now that the noncompliant selfish morons are gone we should see nobody in the military come up with the disease to spread around. If there was a Nobel prize for stupid you would be a repeat winner. But since there is not you will just have to keep settling for being a loser.

I don't recall anyone refusing the forced vaccinations I went through. Pretty sure they would have quickly been removed. Either that or, someone would have helped hold them down and they would have been vaccinated anyway.

This is pure speculation. What if the Pentagon mandate has less to do with spreading the disease and more to do with minimizing the serious illness cases? If 20% of your crew is incapacitated with Covid, you've got a problem. If 20% of your crew has a mild cough and fever, you're still able to operate.

[JjBee62]

Or, they survive as a paraplegic, and you, JB, taxpayers in general, and I have to support them in a vegetative state for years. I'm old enough to admit that I only started wearing my seat belt when my employer required it. It became a habit. Then it became a law.

So how others' behaviors affect the society in which they live does actually matter. A lot of the stuff I hear opposing vax mandates is the exact same crap from 40 years ago about seat belt laws. Now, I'm quite sure that seat belt usage is lower among the un vaxxed. I'd bet my own money on it if anyone can prove it. So it's the same kind of people saying it's personal choice to get thrown through the windshield who are saying it's personal choice to run around un vaxxed. And the non-seat belt wearers affect society inexorably in the long run via health care costs, but the anti vaxxers are affecting society more and faster because their inactions affect and infect everyone around them, all the time, all day long.

This is why Singapore now refuses to pay healthcare costs for any voluntarily unvaccinated person.

[JjBee62]

Your portrayal of me could not be further from the truth. I would consider my position to be somewhere between conservative and libertarian. It would also be fair to say 90%+ of the democrat party turns my stomach. But what you cannot say about me is that I follow a party line. Clearly you misinterpreted my last point about Dem vs Rep. Or maybe I wasn't clear; it works both ways. The vast majority of political discourse is party driven. That is a sad fact. Gone is independent thought. It is my side vs your side at all costs. Ideas? They don't matter. And as I have said repeatedly now, my only interest in this whole vaccine argument is to challenge people to think for themselves.

I often hear the vaccine has become a political issue. That is so sad. I don't quite agree entirely but yes, there are many that make their decisions based on our political hacks, be them elected or on MSNBC, FoxNews, CNN etc.

What gave you the impression I 'declare I have a closed mind, my positions are totally dependent on politics. ' . I am baffled. Call me wrong. Call me an idiot. You can call me a lot. LOL But I greatly value my independent thought. Sean Hannity makes me just as nauseous as Rachel Maddow.

My opinions are founded on principles. I have a strong bias towards freedom and with that, personal responsibility. Only recently has a "freedom thumper" become a dirty phrase. I could go on about my perspective, but pretty sure no one gives a shit. But suffice to say, you could not be more wrong in your assessment.

If you value your independent thought, why aren't you using it? Our entire discussion started with my response about some anti-vax propaganda. You've repeatedly defended that propaganda and the anonymous people who are responsible for it. Merely 5 seconds of independent thought will clearly show it for what it is. If you want a more detailed approach, read ptrbrgr's post on the CCCA video. He covers the same points I covered, in greater detail and with a high level of knowledge.

This gave me the impression you have a closed mind and base your decisions on politics:

Perhaps you need to research what a "right" is. The left seems to have a real challenge with that.

When people phrase things as left, right, liberal or conservative, they're making a political declaration. If one side "has a real challenge" with something, it's black or white thinking. Add in that 90% of Democrats turn your stomach and the summation is a closed mind guided by politics.

What is a right? Time for another quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Recognize that? All men? Unalienable rights? Liberty? Are you wondering "what about all those slaves?" Right in the US Declaration of Independence.

"Rights" are subject to change. 200 years ago, most people didn't have the right to vote. Until 100 years ago women didn't have the right to own property. It wasn't too long ago when a woman didn't have the right to choose a husband.

Let's apply the concept of rights to your open mind. Every year rights get changed. Some go away, some new ones take their place.

What is your argument against healthcare as a right? Do you believe that wealth is the determining factor on who receives medical care?

[Dcrist0527]

First, allow me to say kudos on a well thought out response. I would agree with most of your points and disagree with a few.

the video also contains falsehoods and at least one blatant monster lie, which is that the trial deviated from the 'plan' as they put it. Every clinical trial has a protocol. This is the gospel. Every T is crossed, every I is dotted. For those with a masochistic bent, you can find the protocol for this trial in the supplementary material of the NEJM paper, all 376 pages thereof. Every protocol has a detailed plan for interim analyses, and has exactly defined rules for stopping early. This can happen for example if you find early on that the vaccine is highly effective, or if there are adverse outcomes and safety issues. This trial was stopped early, exactly following the protocol, because it hit all primary efficacy endpoints and safety checks. This was reported in all media outlets at the time. The CCCA knows this. When they say the trialists deviated from the protocol, they are blatantly lying to you. There is no other way of putting it. And when you stop early, the trial is over, you unblind, and offer the vaccine to all participants, also according to protocol. If you have a highly effective vaccine, it would be unethical to do otherwise

I could not disagree more. As I said earlier in the thread, this was arguably the most important human trials of our lifetime. You contradict yourself when you say everything went as planned. And then detail how they moved the mark. It's like a 100-question exam. If you answer the first 10 questions correctly, you can stop there and claim a perfect score? I concede there is an ethical argument that can be made. (I don't necessarily agree with it on balance.) But to pull the plug 2 months in because you like the early results? That's borderline unethical. We lost any ability to track longevity. And lo and behold, one of the biggest problems we have today is the vaccine waning. Let's not mention long term side effects. But this is where it gets ugly and sinister. We allowed Pfizer to grade their own test. Granted, that's normal. But the FDA and CDC were waiting with their rubber stamp. The reality: they got a 100% on those first 10 questions but boy, they sure didn't earn a perfect score.

Onwards to the RRR versus ARR mambo jambo (if numbers aren't your thing, you might want to skip this section). Dcrist0527 pointed out in his post there is indeed an important difference. A clinical trial is always comparative, treatment versus placebo arm. Therefore you always report the outcome as a relative measure such as efficacy. There is nothing special about COVID trials. It's always been that way, always will be that way. That was the 95% cited in the NEJM paper. Now if you are a policy maker, and you want to know for example something about the basic reproduction number R0, you want to know something about absolute risks and reduction of those through interventions. But this is pretty complicated stuff and hard to estimate, because things constantly change.

I'm ashamed to admit to being a numbers nerd. LOL. Again, I don't disagree with much of what was said. Both RRR and ARR are valid metrics. And you were very effective in summarizing their worth. But what I strongly object to is selling RRR as efficacy. Or even the false definition spread about efficacy. Use your example. If that old lady got a flier saying you are 95% more likely to stay free of covid if you take this shot, would she? Because that's what happened to the masses. And that is not at all accurate. So I suppose my beef is more with the marketing vs the actual math. Here again, I blame CDC and FDA as much as I blame Pfizer. And I blame our policy makers even more. They put the politics over science anf clarity.

I'll agree to disagree with you on these points. But I appreciate the dialogue.